Amputated hands had been laid over the face of the decapitated skull and arranged …

Under limestone slabs in a cave in Brazil, scientists made a ghoulish
new discovery: a decapitated skull covered in amputated hands.

These 9,000-year-old bones may be evidence of the oldest known case of ritual beheading
in the New World, raising new questions as to how this grisly practice
began in the Americas, the researchers said in a new study.

Decapitation was likely common in the New World, according to the scientists. For example, in South America, heads of defeated enemies
were often used as war trophies — the Arara people in the Brazilian
Amazon used skulls of defeated enemies as musical instruments, the Inca
turned skulls into drinking jars, and the Jivaro people of Ecuador
shrunk heads to imprison the souls of foes. The Uru-Uru Chipaya people
in Bolivia also once employed skulls in modified Christian rituals, and
the Chimú culture in Peru incorporated decapitation as a standard
procedure in human sacrifices. [See photos of the 9,000-year-old decapitated skull and other remains]

"Few Amerindian habits impressed the European colonizers more than the
taking and displaying of human body parts, especially when decapitation
was involved," said study lead author André Strauss, an archaeologist
at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

Until now, the oldest reported instance of ritual beheading in South
America took place 3,000 years ago in Peru, and the oldest known case in
North America happened about 6,000 to 8,000 years ago in Florida.

Now, scientists have discovered a case of ritual decapitation in Brazil that dates back about 9,000 years.
"This is the oldest case of decapitation found in the New World," Strauss told Live Science.

The scientists investigated an environmentally protected tropical
region in east-central Brazil known as Lagoa Santa, which means "Holy
Lake" in Portuguese. The area, which is covered in savanna-type
vegetation as well as forests, was explored heavily in the 19th century
by researchers looking for evidence of interactions between prehistoric
humans and giant animals, such as saber-toothed cats and ground sloths.
The scientists focused on a site called Lapa do Santo, or "saint's rock
shelter." It was here that the researchers previously found the oldest
evidence of rock art in South America, which included pictures of
penises, engraved on the bedrock there, that are about 9,400 years old.

Excavations at Lapa do Santo revealed signs of human occupation dating
back about 12,000 years. Stone tools and animal bones found at the
shelter suggest the prehistoric groups that lived there subsisted on
plants they gathered and small and midsize animals they hunted.

In 2007, the researchers discovered 9,000-year-old fragments of human
remains at Lapa do Santo, including a skull, jaw, the first six
vertebrae of the neck and two severed hands. The bones were buried about
22 inches (55 centimeters) below the surface, under limestone slabs,
which suggests they were part of a deliberate ritual entombment, the
researchers said.

The amputated hands were laid palm-side down over the face of the
skull, with the left hand pointing upward and covering the right side of
the face, while the right hand pointed downward and covered the left
side of the face. Until now, only relatively simple burials had been
uncovered in Lagoa Santa, Strauss said.

In addition, the disembodied heads found in South America were
typically discovered in the Andes mountain range, suggesting that
decapitation began as an Andean practice. This new finding suggests that
ritual beheading may have started elsewhere, the researchers said.

It remains unclear why this ritual decapitation at Lapa do Santo took
place. The chemical nature and physical features of the bones suggest
they came from a member of the group that lived there, the researchers
said, meaning the body likely was not a war trophy of an outsider.
Instead, the people at this site may have used these remains to express
their ideas regarding death and the universe, Strauss said.

In the future, the researchers hope to extract and analyze DNA from the
remains, to learn more about the person the bones belonged to. The
scientists detailed their findings online today (Sept. 23) in the journal PLOS ONE.